


Stolen Lives and Broken Hearts

by Foxbear



Category: Glitch Techs (Cartoon)
Genre: Abuela - Freeform, Abuelo, Alpha - Freeform, F/M, Grandparents, Hinobi, Katana, Pain, Tacos, Trust, Van - Freeform, corporate, mind wiping, papi - Freeform, store, sword - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-13
Updated: 2020-06-13
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:20:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24691417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Foxbear/pseuds/Foxbear
Summary: Fives nearly worshiped Mitch Williams, he had faith in him. There were reasons that faith was broken, but there were reasons it formed in the first place.
Relationships: Papi Nieves/Abuela Nieves
Comments: 5
Kudos: 31





	Stolen Lives and Broken Hearts

“Mitch?” a small, tear strained voice whispered softly to him. “What’s wrong? Where’s he?” 

“I said!” Mitch snapped down at Fives, but caught himself, seeing the look of true terror in the child’s eyes.

Fives didn’t belong here. Not here at Hinobi, not here huddled in the broken remains of the simulator room, not here with only a teen barely older than him for protection and comfort. Mitch Williams drew a long breath and turned away from where he was trying to hack open a storage closet. He knelt down so he could look the child in the eyes and gave the child the warm smile that always seemed to calm him. Mitch reached up and brushed the unruly curls away from Fives’s terrified gaze.

“He’s coming Fives,” Mitch said, pouring his own confidence into the statement. 

No one, not Hinobi, not even Phil, knew Nieves the way that he did. Nieves strategy was top notch, but if you knew how it worked, its excellence only made it easier to predict. 

“Did he really do something bad?” Fives suddenly burst out. 

Unease warred with disbelief in his face and Mitch fought back a groan and looked away. 

“He broke the rules,” Mitch uneasily confirmed, “but-”

“He didn’t!” Fives burst out swinging a kick, remarkably strong for such scrawny legs, at Mitch’s single exposed shin. “He wouldn’t break the rules! It’s wrong to break the rules!”

Mitch winced and his face twisted into a grim smile. 

“Sometimes it the rules that are wrong Fives,” he said softly.

Fives squinted at him through one eye, the tears streaming down his face again. 

“So are you going to capture him?” Fives finally asked. “Like Phil said you had to?” 

Mitch drew in a long deep breath and stood, working on getting the closest open again. 

“Mitch?” Fives asked again cautiously. “Are you going to capture him?”

“I capture glitches Fives,” Mitch said softly. “Not Glitch Techs.”

He felt a small impact on the back of his legs as Fives darted forward to hug him with a happy gasp, and a smile played around the almost formed mustache he had been growing for weeks. The closet sprang open with a harsh clang and Mitch quickly emptied if of the canisters holding undeveloped cores. 

“Now Fives,” he said as he picked up the child and with some effort lifted him into the space. “What did we talk about?”

“I don’t belong here,” Fives dutiful repeated. “I should be back with Abuela and Abuelo.” 

“And you were never here,” Mitch said as he pulled off his coat to wrap around Fives for padding against the hard surface. “You did stay home with Abuela and she made you delicious tacos.”

“I can make my own tacos,” Fives said with a sniff. “I make ‘em better than Abuela.”

“Right,” Mitch said as his gauntlet began to blink in a rather worrisome manner. “You will have to make me some tacos to prove it then.”

“I will!” Fives gave him a bit of his classic glare of intense focus through the tears. “You’ll see!”

Mitch paused to give him one more smile. 

“See?” He said softly. “Breaking the rules can be fun.” 

Fives looked askance at him again and Mitch could have kicked himself for undoing all of his efforts to calm the child in a few words. The junior Glitch Tech groaned and rubbed his eyes. 

“Look,” he said quickly, “just stay here, be quiet, and I promise. He will explain this far better than I can. You trust him right?”

Fives quietly nodded. 

“Good,” Mitch said as the sounds of approaching battle filled the room. “Now-”

Fives reached forward and suddenly gripped his hand. Mitch was about to snap at him but something in the child’s determined look stopped him.

“I trust you too!” Fives said quickly. “I was never here, I’ll be quiet.”

With that statement of faith the child folded himself back into the cupboard in one of his fantastically graceful movements and pulled Mitch’s coat over his head. Mitch choked back an odd feeling that lodged like a lump in his throat and picked up his gauntlet from where he had left it on the counter wrapped in insulation. It immediately began to blare as he freed it and slid it on his wrist. The display showed him that Phil was charging down the corridor at a dead run and rapidly firing at something that didn’t show up on the display.

“Well, you can’t see anything in a blizzard after all,” Mitch said with a chuckle as he stalked towards the door. 

“So long hopes,” he said as he kicked the remains of one of the portal generators out of his way. “So long dreams,” he snarled as he primed his gauntlet and prepared to face the enemy. “So long Hinobi career of glory and fame built over a decade.” 

The doors burst open as Phil came flying through them backwards. Mitch tracked him with the targeting function on his gauntlet and prepared to fire on the massive redhead, but the display already showed that the memory wipe was in full effect and Mitch gave a delighted laugh. 

“I never should have doubted you Nieves,” he exclaimed as the towering Glitch Tech strode through the door followed by Alpha’s looming bulk. 

“How’s that for following protocol you old bag of wind?” Mitch demanded gleefully as he prodded Phil with a toe. 

Alpha growled at him in a disappointed tone as Nieves swept past Mitch and took in the blasted room with a grim expression on his dark face. His snow white hair reflected the light of small fires that were still burning. 

“So these portal guns are still busted,” Mitch said as he scurried up to the senior tech, with the massive mech following him, “but the ones in the next lab over are salvageable. It will be no sweat for me to rig them to drop us outside of the store. I have Fives-”

He saw the blow coming. He really did. With his smaller size and agility it should have been no trouble at all to dodge it. However his brain just wouldn’t process the idea that Nieves, the Blizzard of Bailey, was attacking him. His brain processed the moment that the massive fist connected with his jaw easily enough, and the clang as the back of his skull impacted against Alpha’s forearm. That was a burst of pain and stars that he would remember till the day he died. The stars cleared just as he heard some process chime that it was primed in his gauntlet. The great amber fish bowl of Alpha’s face loomed over him with a worried ‘o’ shape peering down at him. 

“I’m fine Alpha,” Mitch assured the pet with a weak smile. “Nieves would never hurt me.”

“Where’s Fives?” Nieves demanded in a harsh voice. 

“What the Boosh man?” Mitch demanded, turning his face from the pet to the master. “What-”

“Fives!” the man demanded again without looking up from the screen of Mitch’s gauntlet. 

That he had somehow pulled off of his arm and was now doing something too Mitch realized. 

“I was just telling you,” Mitch snapped out. “I hid him in the cupboard where, he’d be safe. The sides are coated-”

Nieves stood and stalked towards the cupboard in question. With Alpha lumbering behind grumbling something that sounded like Five’s name. 

“Are coated in reflective material so that the memory wave can’t damage the preset core cylinders,” Mitch went on rubbing his jaw as he struggled to follow the much taller man. 

“And ow!” Mitch commented as Nieves reached the cupboard. “What was this about?” 

“It needs to look like you fought,” Nieves stated as he pulled open the door of the cupboard. 

The two techs were silent for a moment and a sad, almost painful smile played over Nieves’s face as the three of them stared in at the figure of Fives, sitting cross-legged with Mitch’s jacket over his head, finger to his lips, focused entirely on being quiet. 

“Hey, Fives,” Nieves whispered softly. 

“Papa!” Fives called out in delight, his eyes springing open. “Alpha!” 

Alpha gave a happy hum and exclamation points danced across his fishbowl. 

“Stay there,” Nieves ordered when Fives made to come to him. 

Mitch watched the interaction silently, he could only hope to one day inspire as much trust as his senior Glitch Tech did. Already Fives was completely calm.  
“Do you trust your friend Mitch?” Nieves asked in a soft voice.

The question sent a stab of fear through Mitch for reasons he didn’t fully understand. On the other hand they were standing in a destroyed simulator room while being hunted by their fellow Glitch Techs, a little fear was to be expected. 

“Do you think I should?” Fives asked. 

“What kind of answer is that you ungrateful little noob?” Mitch blurted out, and immediately covered his mouth in embarrassment while Alpha glared sideways at him through a narrow ‘v’ shape. 

“The kind he gets from his padre,” Nieves said dryly. “Mama always does say I think too much. Yes, yes you should trust Mitch.”

“Si, Papa,” Fives said with a grin. “I’ll trust Mitch.”

Mitch felt that odd knot in his throat again and blinked the smoke out of his eyes. 

“Now,” Nieves said pulling up his cracked and damaged gauntlet. “I’m going to send you on a fun ride, all the way to Mitch’s Hinobi van. You stay there and stay quiet until Mitch comes to get you. Then the two of you will go to Abulea’s for tacos.”

“I’m making Mitch’s taco!” Fives insisted at the portal hummed to life below him and he dropped through with a laugh. “See you later Alpha!” 

The mech waved after the boy while Nieves stared after him for the briefest of moments before tossing his gauntlet though the portal after the boy and turning to Mitch with a grim set to his face. Mitch gave him a weak smile in return.

“I should have never brought him here,” Nieves said in a hollow tone. “He doesn’t belong in this pit.”

“So let me guess,” Mitch said quickly to cover up the terrifying moment of silence that followed, “you tie me up and I tell them you and Alpha escaped in the opposite direction and-”

“Williams!” Nieves snapped out. “Corporate is already in the store.”

Mitch stopped and terror flashed through his entire body as Alpha growled uneasily and glanced at the door. 

“We’ll fight them together then,” he blustered. “There are three of us. We-”

“Williams!” Nieves spoke in a low commanding tone. “Listen carefully because I only have time to say this once. You are going to plixilate me with your own gauntlet.”

“No,” Mitch breathed in horror but Nieves went on remorselessly. 

“Then you will give yourself a low level blast with Phil’s gauntlet.” Nieves said. “Then you will go find the corporate inspector and turn your gauntlet, Alpha, and me over to them. Then you go out on your scheduled round and will take my son, the boy who trusts you, who worships the ground you walk on, and you will take him back where he belongs. You will do what needs to be done to keep him safe.”

“I can’t,” Mitch whispered as tears began to streak his face, far more than the child had cried a perverse part of his mind pointed out. “You are the Blizzard of Bailey. I can’t, please, I’ll fight corporate for you, we’ll fight corporate together. Alpha alone is worth any three of...”

Gentle compassion softened the lines of Nieves face for a moment and he held out his gauntlet free right hand. With a surge of hope Mitch reached up and gripped it. 

“Some Mitchuation I’ve gotten you into eh Chico?” Nieves said with a twisted grin. 

“Don’t call me Chico and don’t use that idiotic joke,” Mitch replied with a relieved laugh. 

He was so relieved that he didn’t notice Nieves signaling Alpha to move around and grab his neck in an immobilizing grip. Nieves gently slipped the gauntlet onto the younger tech’s arm and then wrapped Mitch’s left hand over the activation controls. 

“No!” Mitch screamed out. “Please! No-”

The green cubes swarmed out from his gauntlet and descended on the massive form of Nieves like a plague of digital locust. It must have been measured in hundredths of seconds but for Mitch the moment stretched into eternity as he watched his friend, his mentor, be consumed by the pixels. He was vaguely aware of Alpha roaring in agony and releasing him. The mech leapt over him and grasped his master in a protective embrace, but Alpha was a thing of plixels himself and he dissolved even faster than his master. The vanished together. 

Mitch was moving as soon as Alphas’s hands released him, trying to reverse the process, but Nieves had developed these programs there was no way a junior tech could unlock his work. Mitch gave a frustrated scream as this sank in. At the same moment he heard a groan from Phil and Mitch’s eyes narrowed in rage. He staggered to his feet and stumbled to the senior tech’s side. He lifted the other’s gauntlet and set it to high, he angled it so just a portion of the beam grazed his face and immediately fell into the half haze he remembered from training. 

“The new tech appears to be as competent, and far more loyal than expected,” a cold voice was saying over his head a few moments later. 

Mitch blinked up and the blue and white blurs of the corporate officers, their heads covered in full helmets. 

“Yeah, thought he’d be trouble,” Phil was saying. “Glad to be wrong I guess.” 

“How did you capture the rogue Glitch Tech Mitch Williams?” one of the corporate officers asked. 

“I don’t know?” Mitch answered in a confused tone that was only partly affection.

The beam had a conveniently disorientating effect on you like that. 

“I had my gauntlet out and ready to fire before they came in,” he held it up to demonstrate, the screen glowing the sickly green of the plixilation setting.

He felt a touch smug when even the corporate goons shifted uneasily out of the path of his aim. 

“Then Phil came blasting though the door with his gauntlet firing and I got caught in his blast wave as I fired,” Mitch finished. 

“The data from the two gauntlets seems to confirm his story,” another faceless goon offered. 

“Two?” Mitch said in confusion. “There should be three...what happened to Nie-the rouge’s?” 

The corporate goons exchanged glances, at least he thought they did, their helmets turned towards each other. 

“Don’t you have a patrol to run?” Phil demanded suddenly. 

“Yes sir,” Mitch said in the dull tone of the properly mind wiped. “I have a patrol to do.”

The quiet murmuring of the goons followed him out of the destroyed room, nearly overwhelmed by the pounding of his own heart. He made it to the parking lot without breaking into a run and buckled himself into his seat before he fully remembered why he was there.

“What’s the Mitchuation?” Fives whispered onto the back of his necks. 

“Boosh and nerts Fives!” Mitch yelped, lunging against his belts. “Get back in the...in...in the back! No one can see you?”

“Why not?” Fives demanded. “Look corporate’s here. They can help with the bad guys!”

“Fives,” Mitch choked out the words as quietly as he could. “Your father told you to trust me. Right?”

“Right,” Fives replied the frightened tone creeping back into his voice. 

“Then just go and wait for, nerts, noob alert,” Mitch suddenly hissed.

One of the newest transfers was headed for his van. 

“Get back there and hide so the noob can’t see you!” Mitch snapped. “Make yourself useful if you can.”

Fives didn’t respond and Mitch took the silence for a good sign. He quickly pulled the van out of the parking lot and headed straight for the spot he knew the taco truck would be parked. The drive couldn’t have been over five minutes, he had done it dozens of times with Nieves. The odd fusion of Nieves’s life seemed to find perfect expression in the spicy concoctions that his parents crafted in the back of that old rust bucket. For the first time however he approached the alley with trepidation and horror in his heart instead of joy and anticipation. Five’s grandfather, a man even larger than his son, was leaning against the side of his rig cleaning some tool of his trade with a suspiciously greasy rag when Mitch finally pulled into the alley. He glanced at the Hinobi van curiously and his face broke into a grin.

“Eh!” he called into the rig, “It’s our boy Mitch mi chicquita! Get something tasty cooking for the growing boy!” 

“No!” Fives exploded out of the door behind Mitch, startling the Glitch Tech. “Mitch promised that I could cook him his next taco. He says I make better tacos than Abuela!”

“Mitch. Said. What?” Demanded a cold voice from the rig. 

Despite the situation Mitch couldn’t help a real laugh breaking past his control. 

“But first!” Fives went on eagerly. “Mitch look what I did! I protected your stuff from noobs!” 

Mitch followed the direction of his pointing finger and broke out into a full laugh. The boy had found a marker and scrawled, No Noobs! On the primary storage cabinet. 

“That you did Fives,” Mitch agreed. “Now you promised me a taco?”

His voice nearly broke on the last sound and he snatched up Nieves’s gauntlet and shoved it on his wrist. His eye caught the embossed snowflake on the side of the cracked gauntlet and he nearly lost control, nearly threw himself into the arms of Nieves Sr., but the Blizzard of Bailey had trusted him with this task. He set the gauntlet and waited for the little family to gather for their usual group hug. 

“The boy sent him home with you early eh?” Nieves senior asked glancing at Mitch with a wry smile. 

“This is where he belongs,” Mitch said softly as he raised the Blizzard’s gauntlet. “This is where he was all afternoon, with you, with his family.”

Mitch fired and felt something in him die as he watched the confusion on the adult’s faces slacken into the post wiping haze. That didn’t bother him, not much, but Fives had had a moment to look frightened. Mitch didn’t realize he was shaking uncontrollably until he was blocks from their house. He finally yanked the van over to the side of the road and let himself collapse into tears. 

“I am stronger than this!” he gasped out. “I won, I beat those corporate booshes. Nieves would be-” 

Plixilated. Whispered his traitorous mind. Mitch bit the steering wheel to fight back his howl of anguish. 

“I will find you,” he whispered. “I will free you. We will escape this pit. I won’t betray your trust in me. I won’t betray Fives’s trust.”

It took hours to pull himself together but fortunately this area of town was quiet tonight. Mitch had more than enough time to reformat the gauntlet into something that would pass as an internal component of his van. He selected a new gauntlet and had it programmed before the first glitch appeared. He was passing by the Nieves’ van on his way back to the store, he had been uneasy about them all night and just wanted one more glimpse of the happy family before he headed back, when he saw the unmarked white van parked in front of the alley. His stomach dropped and then rose to choke him. 

“Corporate,” he whispered vague terror filling him.

Mitch yanked his van over and leapt out. His mind spun searching for an excuse that came as the first corporate goon spotted him. It was simple. He was a loyal, eager young Glitch Tech.

“Do you need any help good sirs?” he demanded “Mitch Williams, highest ranked Hinobi rookie in the city reporting for duty!” 

He flashed the agent a wide grin and was rewarded with an indulgent laugh. 

“Sure kid,” the agent jerked his helmet back towards the van. “Come earn some XP.”

Mitch was giddy with the success of his, not quite a plan, as he followed the goon like the good little Glitch Tech he obviously was, but that bled into fear and horror as he saw Nieves Sr. sprawled on his face in front of the truck and Fives clutched in one of his Abulea’s arms while her other held her family sword. where they had fallen behind their massive, but still ineffectual, protector.

“What?” Mitch demanded. “What did they see?”

“Nothing,” the goon said with a shrug. “They just knew where Tech Nieves was last night, and orders are that everybody resets.” 

Mitch kept his eyes on Fives face, peaceful in forced sleep, as fear climbed up his spine. 

“Well,” he said with forced cheerfulness, “it’s a good thing you’ve reset everybody then. I’ll be on my way-”

He felt the iron grip on his arm as the goon spun him around to face the gauntlet. 

“Everybody resets,” the goon said in a cheerful tone as the world went green. 

Mitch came awake to a pounding headache and a dry mouth. He wiped a line of dried drool from his cheek and blinked blearily at the dashboard of his van. He was almost sure of what he was looking for when the concentrated essence of irritation spoke in his ear. 

“Good morning! Glitch Tech Mitch Williams!” a floating mech called out from over his shoulder. 

“What is this?” Mitch demanded, irritable from hunger, thirst, the crick in his neck. “I didn’t order a pet, I’m saving up my XP for a-”

He squinted as a stab of pain replaced the name that was on the tip of his tongue. A warm amber eye stared at him hopefully. He was going to get the same one that-that-someone had gotten. Who? 

“I am not a pet!” the little mech said cheerfully. “I am Bitt! I am here to instruct new Glitch Techs during the training process-”

“I’m no noob,” Mitch snarled as he tried to process the sense that he needed to do something. 

“Perhaps not!” Bitt went on. “But I am here to help any new noobs you might be tutoring-”

“Not gonna happen,” Mitch’s eyes caught on the words scrawled on the storage compartment. 

“How can you say that?” Bitt chattered on. “It is every experienced Techs duty to-”

“That!” Mitch pointed to the scrawled words as he got shakily to his feet and advanced on the mech. 

“No Noobs!” Bitt read. “Oh dear. It this is a restricted space perhaps it would be best-”

“To put you in storage?” Mitch hissed as he grasped the corporate spy and found the off button. 

The mech made a cheerful chime as his systems shut down and Mitch slumped against the wall of his van breathing heavily. He needed...he needed to figure out what had happened, except he already knew.

“Everybody resets,” he whispered. 

He shoved Bitt into the storage compartment and dropped to his knees in front of the words. What did they mean? What had been stolen from him? How could he get it back? Did he want to get it back? He took a deep breath and growled. 

“No one steals my mind from me and gets away with it,” he snarled to the world at large. 

He staggered up and set the van’s controls for the Hinobi store. There was one place he would eventually be able to find his answers.


End file.
